Kamudzandu, Israel. 2023. Translation as Incarnation: The Bible in the Twenty-First-Century Global South. Colonial and Postcolonial Biblical Interpretation Series. Eugene, OR: Resource Publications. 146 pp. Paperback. ISBN-13: 9781498221283.
Israel Kamudzandu’s Translation as Incarnation: The Bible in the Twenty-First-Century Global South is a thought-provoking contribution to the Colonial and Postcolonial Biblical Interpretation Series. Israel Kamudzandu, a professor of New Testament studies at Saint Paul School of Theology, proposes that Christianity is growing globally because of the translation of the Bible and hymns into the languages of the Global South. Kamudzandu organizes his work into seven chapters as he explores Bible translation and hymnody through a postcolonial lens.
In chapter 1, Kamudzandu considers how missionaries during the colonial period used the Bible to oppress and enslave the peoples of the Global South. In chapter 2, he focuses on the use of the Bible in education during the colonial period. He explains that missionaries and colonialists alike used the Scriptures to further their Western agendas.
In chapter 3, Kamudzandu turns to the topic of Bible translation. He suggests that vernacular translations were a powerful tool in the hands of the indigenous believers, enabling them to discover new truths and challenge their Western oppressors. He considers it a miracle that the Bible brought a blessing despite the missionaries who used it as a tool of oppression (50, 53).
Chapter 4 considers in more depth the transformative power of vernacular Bible translations. Kamudzandu proposes that vernacular translations incarnate God in a local culture and allow believers to participate in the resurrection of Christ and have charismatic experiences. Translations open “a sacred door of encounters with God,” which include spiritual gifts, speaking in tongues, healings, and prophetic preaching (60). He concludes this chapter with the following summation: “As notorious as colonialism was, and as colonial as the missionary enterprise was, there was something new that was born in the midst of these two” (76).
In chapter 5, Kamudzandu explores how translations allowed indigenous believers to better understand the Scriptures and challenge some of the Western claims about faith and practice. In a sense, the Bible in translation was “a weapon to counter the ideologies and metanarratives of missionaries and colonizers” (79).
In chapter 6, Kamudzandu provides an overview of the history of the Pentecostal and charismatic movements in the Global South. He suggests that many in the Global South church have a holistic understanding of faith and a blending of spirituality. He describes it as syncretism, yet it is not “all evil as colonizers and Western missionaries thought” (89). Furthermore, vernacular Bible translations equip believers to develop their own theology, even a syncretistic one, and allow Jesus Christ to be relevant within a culture (91).
Chapter 7 explores the importance of hymnody in the Global South. Kamudzandu views Bible translation and the development of indigenous hymnody to be closely linked. He writes, “While vernacular translations of the Bible formed the spiritual nest that nurtured Global South faith, hymnody translations incubated, unleashed, and ushered in an unstoppable revival and catalyzed the spread of Pentecostalism” (102). He underscores that hymns in the local languages were a means of protesting the identity forced on people by the colonizers and also an avenue for claiming a new identity and belief in God.
Kamudzandu’s work is a unique and provocative contribution to the literature on Bible translation. As a Zimbabwean scholar and churchman writing from a postcolonial perspective, he offers insights that many Bible translation scholars cannot offer. He has a very high view of vernacular Bible translation yet regards the missionaries of the colonial period who engaged in the work as colonizers and oppressors. He views Bible translation as an activity that changed the status of indigenous believers and gave them positive roles in the church, whereas they were formerly in a relationship best described as “missionary and the missionized, the invader and the invadee, the Global South ‘heathen’ and the self-proclaimed European ‘missionary,’ the colonizer and the colonized…” (84).
In keeping with his high regard for Bible translation, Kamudzandu offers some striking statements about its impact. “Indeed, vernacular translations of the Bible have been the driving force behind global evangelism and church growth and will remain so even beyond the twenty-first century” (71). “Vernacular translations of the Bible and hymns brought about national independence, freedom, and self-identification” (113). “The ability to use the vernacular Bible and hymns has elevated Global South nations to become the twenty-first-century home of Christianity” (122).
Despite his views on Bible translation and its impact on the churches of the Global South, Kamudzandu fails to demonstrate that Christianity, and in particular Pentecostalism and the charismatic movements, are growing globally because of the translation of the Bible and hymns into the languages of the Global South (ix, 47, 57). He does not, for instance, provide a case study that demonstrates how a specific translation was used to the benefit of a specific group of Pentecostal or charismatic believers, leading to their growth. He does not even demonstrate that these Global South denominations exclusively use vernacular translations as opposed to translations in major world languages. Finally, Kamudzandu notes the decline of the church in the West, a church with vernacular Bible translations, but does not explain why these churches are not benefiting from translation in the same way as the churches in the Global South.
Furthermore, when Kamudzandu writes specifically about the benefits of vernacular Bible translation, a recurring example points to the dangers of syncretism. He notes at several points that the vernacular translations allowed the indigenous believers to discover new truths in Scripture that their missionary pastors and teachers had not brought out. He then specifically writes that African Christians found biblical support in their translations for the veneration of their ancestors and for viewing Jesus as one of their ancestors (19, 68–71, 102).
Despite Kamudzandu’s enthusiasm for Bible translation, I do not recommend this book for its intended audience, Western Christians who are not familiar with the global impact of the Bible and the growth of the church in the Global South. Those researching the impact of Bible translation and its perceived value from a postcolonial Zimbabwean perspective, however, will benefit from the work.
Aaron Shryock